


(mis)communications

by htruona



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mentions of Death, Sorry?, Trauma, this was supposed to be comedic but now i just made myself sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 14:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19465732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/htruona/pseuds/htruona
Summary: Lysandre narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell me you misunderstand what I am saying.”“Of course I understand!” Ash said. “I was ten the first time I was killed because humans messed with pokémon they had no right to mess with! For six years I’ve been dealing with people like that!”Alain choked. There was so much wrong with that statement that he didn’t even know where to start deciphering it.





	(mis)communications

**Author's Note:**

> this one’s slightly better than my last one. i still dunno but. hey. what the heccque.
> 
> (my titles haven’t gotten any better either but hey, it works. sue me.)

“Why are you doing this?!” Ash shouted down to Lysandre. 

“Because there are people in this world, horrible people who do nothing but bring stain on this world,” Lysandre replied. “They steal what isn’t theirs, they control and use pokémon, they completely disregard everything that makes humans good.”

“That doesn’t make what you’re doing right!”

Lysandre narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell me you misunderstand what I am saying.”

“Of course I understand!” Ash said. “I was ten the first time I was killed because humans messed with pokémon they had no right to mess with! For six years I’ve been dealing with people like that!”

Alain choked. There was so much wrong with that statement that he didn’t even know where to start deciphering it.

Lysandre paused for a moment, too, before shaking the supposed shock off. “If you truly mean that, then my own plans will be all the easier to carry out,” he said, his blank expression drawing itself into a cruel smirk. Shivers ran down Alain’s spine. 

(Why did that cruel smirk look so at home on Lysandre’s face? Why was the malicious, unhinged gleam in his eyes so natural?)

Lysandre pulled a remote out from his blazer pocket. After pressing a button, two machines flew out from his backpack and hung themselves threateningly in the air.

 _What are you doing?_ Alain wanted to shout, but his voice was paralysed in his throat. 

“You see, this works so much better when the subject already believes that humans are inherently bad,” Lysandre drawled, his voice slick like false-sweet honey. Ash began to shout, countering that point—Lysandre ignored him and continued speaking. “Do yourself a favour and don’t resist. The effects are rather… unpleasant if you do.”

Alain’s heart leaped out of his chest in fear. What was Lysandre going to do?

Would Lysandre hurt Ash—no, of course he wouldn’t. Lysandre was Lysandre. He was a man who had dedicated his life to helping people and pokémon alike, and while his actions right now were strange, he wouldn’t set his morals aside surely.

The machines set loose beams of red energy at Ash and his Greninja, and Alain felt dread build up in him as he realised how wrong he was.

They _screamed_.

—

In all honesty, Alain forgot about Ash’s strange remark completely through the chaos of Lysandre’s (torture) mind-control-attempting of Ash, the battle leading to Lysandre letting himself fall off of Prism Tower, and everything that happened after.

But now that it was all over the sentence reawoke itself in Alain’s brain and refused to leave him alone.

The easier portion of this was the fact that Ash had said it had started when he was ten and had been continuing for six years. Which made sense—if Alain looked at Ash and didn’t think that he couldn’t be a day over fourteen, if even.

Alain sighed. Maybe Ash just had late puberty or something, he had no idea.

The other part, which Alain was more mildly confused by rather than existential-crisis-inducing confused, was how Ash had specified ‘pokémon that people had no right to mess with’. That one, he could easily chalk down to being a figure of speech—but something in Ash’s tone implied that that wasn’t all there was to it.

No, Ash’s tone back then more had the underlying meaning of ‘these pokémon are important in the way that humans shouldn’t have contact with them in the first place’, and honestly, Alain wished he was making that up.

(There was also the fact that Ash had, apparently, been dealing with criminals on a somewhat regular basis for the past six years. Which Alain did not know what to think of. The only villain he had ever run into was Lysandre.)

The more complicated part went ‘ _the first time I was killed_ ’, meaning that not only had Ash been killed and somehow survived death, it had happened more than one time.

Unless Ash meant something like being seriously injured, but Alain doubted that was the case. He wouldn't have specifically said ‘killed’ had he meant ‘injured’.

So either Ash had very insane luck, managing to be resuscitated on both times he had died (because surely one person can’t die more than twice and be alive at the end of the day, right?).

Or maybe Ash was just immortal. If anyone he knew turned out to be, Alain would be the least surprised if it was Ash.

—

“Ash?” Alain finally worked up the courage to start a few days later. Well, he couldn’t back out of this now or he’d just embarrass himself, so he might as well just go for it. “What did you mean with that… thing you said on Prism Tower?”

Ash looked at him, confused. “What thing?”

Oh no. Don’t tell Alain he imagined it.

“About—about how you had been killed for the first time when you were ten, or whatever it was that you said.” Alain knew exactly what Ash had said. But he didn’t want to show that he knew exactly what he had said, because that would come off as weird and awkward, and Alain didn’t want to come off as either of those two things. 

Ash’s face morphed into an embarrassed realisation. Pikachu sniggered at him, drawing a glare. “Oh. That. I didn’t really mean to say that? I guess,” he said, sounding very unsure of himself.

Alain decided to just ask. He was far too curious not to.

“How did you die, or well, get killed, _for the first time_ ,” Alain said, very much emphasising the last four words so that Ash would understand that he was interested in finding out how he had apparently died and come back to life more than once. 

“I—Well,” Ash stuttered, looking to his partner for help. Pikachu shrugged, said a few words, and hopped off of his shoulder. “Thanks, Pikachu,” Ash said sarcastically. He then turned to Alain and asked genuinely, “Do you mean the first time I died, or the first time I was killed, because they’re two different things.”

Alain was—how were they two different things? _What_?

Ash must’ve seen the look on his face indicating that he had no idea what was going on, because he continued speaking without waiting for an answer.

“The first time I died, I went in a haunted house and got crushed by a chandelier,” Ash said, in a plain tone that suggested he wasn’t bothered by this fact at all. 

Alain internally cringed. Crushed by a chandelier? That was not a pleasant way to go out. At all. (How would that even happen anyway?)

“First time I was killed, though… I tried to stop a fight between Mew and Mewtwo and got caught between their psychic blasts. Or so Mewtwo tells me, anyway, because they erased my memories of it. Said remembering would traumatise me.” Ash frowned. 

Alain had no idea what to think. So, he changed the subject slightly.

“What I meant was—was how are you alive? And still sane?”

Ash gave a very unhelpful shrug. “Luck, mostly.”

Luck. _Luck_. How does one get so lucky as to come back from death not once, but twice? Or, more than twice it seemed to be, because Ash had implied that he had been killed more than once. 

How did he get killed more than once? Who would even want to kill someone like Ash?

( _Team Flare would_ , a treasonous part of his mind hissed.)

Alain ignored it. So, Ash had met Mew—considering that Ash was from Kanto, that wasn’t the most far fetched, he supposed. But what was ‘Mewtwo’? A relative of Mew’s? The sequel?—Alain had no idea.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“It doesn’t really feel real anymore,” Ash spoke up suddenly, his voice snapping Alain out of his mind. Alain looked at Ash questioningly. “Death, I mean. Least for me.”

“How?” Alain asked. 

“Because whenever it happens I always come back. I’ve died, uh,” Ash paused to count on his fingers, “six times now,”— _six times? What the_ —“and there’s always some ghost pokémon, or someone like Manaphy or Victini or, one time, my friend Misty to bring me back… Misty barely let me out of her sight for weeks after Shamouti,” he added as an afterthought.

Shamouti? It sounded vaguely familiar, something he’d heard a long time ago, but he couldn’t place it. (Alain tried to ignore the increasing number of legendary pokémon Ash was name-dropping in all of these stories, not because he didn’t believe him—but rather because he _did_ ).

“But even times like when I first got to Kalos, when I jumped off of Prism Tower,”—Ash did _what now_ —“Mega Blaziken saved me. And that one time with Arceus in, uh, I can’t remember where but Dialga or Palkia or,” a fond smile found its place on Ash’s face for the first time in this conversation, “Giratina was there to block Arceus’ attacks from hitting me, and I don’t know where I got all this luck from if I’m honest but it keeps showing up and I’m kinda terrified that it’s gonna run out, you know?”

Alain gave Ash a sympathetic look, but he had no idea what he could possibly say to that. (Dialga, Palkia. Giratina. _Arceus_. Alain was also rendered speechless by all the legendary pokémon only existing in myths that Ash had apparently met).

“But like, if something bad happens and one of my friends is in danger then I can’t stop myself moving to help them, even if it means I’ll get really hurt, and—” 

Ash paused as if realising something he didn’t want to. 

“Crap, I’ve just unloaded all that on you, sorry, I didn’t mean to do that, uh, it’s just,” Ash looked away from him. “I never really get to talk about this, you know? I can’t talk about it to Misty or Brock, they were there for half of them and I always get the vibe that they don’t want me to talk about it, May’s kinda the same, for Dawn, Bonnie and Max I’d feel kinda bad if I spoke to them, Iris and Cilan I just,” Ash made a strange face, “and I don’t wanna speak to Clemont and Serena either because they both admire me so much and I don’t wanna ruin that, so—”

“Don’t apologise for talking about it,” Alain said, the first thing he managed to bring himself to say in a while. “It’s clearly bothering you. It’s better that you speak up and get through it rather than struggle in silence.”

Was that the right thing to say? Alain hoped that it was. He got the impression that Ash was the type of person to completely disregard his own problems if it meant that everyone else would be better off for it, and it made a part of Alain break. Ash was so selfless, and he cared so much, but Alain had never realised how self-destructive that could be until now.

“And I don’t know much about your other friends, but Serena and Clemont won’t judge you for all this. Nothing you could say would change their opinion of you,” Alain continued.

“That’s… I guess,” Ash said, still looking unsure.

“Just think about it? And if not, well, I’m here. If you wanted to talk to me again that is.” Alain offered.

Ash nodded. “Okay,” he said, sounding nothing like the confident teen Alain had gotten to know.

Maybe Alain’s other questions, like the issue of Ash’s apparent immortality, weren’t answered—but this was enough, he thought.

**Author's Note:**

> me: let’s make something kinda lighthearted!  
> also me: turn it into something that’s morbid and angsty and leaves a bad taste in not only your character’s but also your and all the readers’ mouths  
> me: shit you right
> 
> theres a ridiculous inconsistency in tone during this entire fic. it’s kinda angsty at the start, then it’s more carefree, then it gets angsty again—but you can sue me. i’m not a professional, i am under no obligation to be consistent. ha.


End file.
